Summer Book Review II: Drawdown

Whittling Climate Change Down To A Nothing-burger

I'll make this short and sweet:

As humans, science is what makes us smart and successful:

Example: let's say that long ago, a farmer had a hunch that if water from a river were applied to crops, the harvest would be bigger.  So, one field was watered and another not, and the two harvests compared.

That's science: testing whether ideas work.

Fast-forward to present-day science, which indicates that our world's climate is changing with disastrous results.  Obviously, we're opting to be smart and successful, right?

Editor Paul Hawken and his team have crunched the numbers and shown what steps would be the most effective in getting to that 'smart and successful' goal.  Their book, Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed To Reverse Global Warming, is facts and figures presented using that always-fun method: ranking.

An example: Farmland restoration, a strategy I would have thought would be one of the most important ways forward (because it returns carbon to the ground and prevents native forest from being cleared for agriculture) only ranks #23.  They estimate that about half the 1 billion acres of our world's abandoned farmland could be returned to productive use by 2050, costing a net $72.2 billion, and generating about 18 times that amount in net savings.

The #1 way forward?  You'll have to check out the book for the surprise answer.  #2 is onshore wind turbines, which, BTW, nearly everybody in the US can support by purchasing their power from Arcadia.  Check it out:

https://www.arcadiapower.com

It just switches your power supply from your current provider to wind power that wouldn't otherwise be produced.  And your current provider still services you; the only thing that changes is your power source.  We figure we pay about 5-10% more, though that represents the difference between the wind we buy and the coal/natural gas in our region that we used to buy.  Well worth it.

I Cut My Sugar Intake --> I'm Sleeping Much More Soundly

I Woke Up To All That Sugar

Does added sugar keep one up at night?  You wouldn't think so, but I recently starting cutting back on my sugar intake and I'm sleeping much more soundly.

Granted, it's only been a week, but I haven't done much else differently, recently.

It used to be that I had a radical diet of absolutely no added sugar.  I'd check ingredient labels and refuse to eat anything with added sugar.  Then, gradually, I let down my guard, and recently realized I was consuming staggering amounts of the sweet stuff, yet still thinking I wasn't doing that badly, since I rarely ate candy, cakes, pies, etc.   Here's a typical day for me a week ago:

Breakfast: along with banana and tea (unsweetened):

 * protein drink (26 grams of protein): 26 grams of sugar
 * mixed no sugar and sugary granola: 6 grams
 * dark chocolate square or two: 4 grams

Lunch: along with English Muffin sandwich (0 grams):

  * bottled tea (20 grams of sugar)

Dinner: no added sugar

56 grams in one day!  Or, 14 teaspoons of the crystal powder.

So, I'm bottling my own unsweetened tea to take to work (so far so good), and am cutting out the energy drink (substituting eggs, or leftovers for the protein).  That's a big cut in added sugar, from 56 to 10 grams.

Has that accounted for my sounder sleep?  If so, I'll keep it up.